When she was just 21 years old, Susan Conroy left
the protected campus of Dartmouth College for Calcutta, India. While
her peers looked forward to the summer and a break from classes, Conroy
was planning to serve with the Missionaries of Charity, the Order of
Mother Teresa. That was 1986. Today, Conroy shares her experiences with
Mother Theresa with others through speaking engagements and a book:
Mother Teresa’s Lessons of Love & Secrets of
Sanctity.        “I literally showed up
at her doorstep with hands to serve,” Conroy said during an interview
at her South Portland home. “I wanted to meet this living saint and
help her with her work because Mother Teresa made it sound so easy.”
Conroy said she was prepared to offer “hands to serve, a heart to love”
and joy, which were the only requirements of working with the order.

    After reading about Mother Teresa in a series of
books her mother had ordered, Conroy was inspired, but didn’t see her
dream becoming a reality in the near future. Like most college
students, Conroy did not have extra spending money and as one of 10
children, Conroy said her family was in no position to finance her trip
across the globe.

    She remembered being surprised by her mother’s reaction when she revealed her plans.

    “I said mom, what would you think if I got a job,
earned the money, and sent myself to India?” she said. “I will never in
my life forget her reaction: that would be my worst nightmare.”

    Conroy said she was stunned by her mother’s reaction
because she had been the one to introduce her to Mother Teresa and her
work in Calcutta.

    Conroy still marvels at how quickly she was able to
find funds for her journey. Within days of giving a voice to her dream,
Conroy came upon a newsletter for the William Jewett Tucker Foundation,
an organization that connects Dartmouth students with service
opportunities. Conroy took the newsletter directly to the dean of the
foundation and asked her to sponsor her trip. The foundation did not
offer anything like the program Conroy was proposing, but instead of
sending her away, the dean said Conroy could apply for funding if she
set up her own program and made her own contacts in India.

    “Within a matter of nine weeks, I was on a flight to
India with the whole thing paid for by the Tucker foundation,” she
said. “So the dream came true so much sooner in my life than I ever
imagined possible.”

    Conroy said her plane landed in Calcutta at the
worst possible time. It was 11 p.m., pitch dark and rainy. The airport
had large windows and Conroy said she will never forget the many faces
in the window, looking in at her from the outside.

    “A professor at Dartmouth had told me, if you arrive
in the middle of the night in Calcutta, don’t you dare move from the
airport,” she said.

    He had told her to sleep in the middle of the
airport, under the light. When a man approached Conroy and made
unsuccessful attempts to help her call the YWCA, she was hesitant. When
he offered to bring her to the YWCA in his taxi, she agreed because she
reasoned he hadn’t had time to conspire with the other passenger in the
car. As they traveled through the city, Conroy could see thousands of
people living on the streets.

    In her room, Conroy said she was apprehensive about
going out on the streets alone, but she forced herself to go out right
away. Ironically, Mother Teresa was away at a speaking engagement in
the United States so Conroy went about familiarizing herself with the
city while she waited for Mother Teresa’s return.

    When Conroy first met Mother Teresa in Calcutta, she
said it was extraordinary to be with her on “her turf.” When she made
visits to the U.S., she said Mother Teresa was accompanied by
bodyguards, but in India, Conroy said people could kneel beside her and
hold her hand. Conroy said she had never seen someone so humble.

    During that summer with Mother Teresa and her
Missionaries of Charity, Conroy found the work that brings her joy to
this day: working face to face. She spent her time in the orphanage and
the Home for the Dying. In the orphanage, she fed the children,
administered medicine, taught them English, and brightened their day
through play. Conroy would also pick up dying men off the street and
bring them back to the home. For those patients, she did whatever she
could to bring them comfort.

    As far as her own comfort was concerned, Conroy had
sparse accommodations, but she didn’t complain because she wasn’t there
for a vacation, she said. The air was so polluted with soot and smoke
that she couldn’t stay clean and she wondered if her breathing might be
affected.

    In her room at the YWCA, Conroy said huge lizards
climbed the walls, cockroaches lined the floor and the bed bugs
scurried across her mattress. Amazingly, Conroy didn’t get any major
illnesses, although one of her friends had to return home to England
after contracting Amebic dysentery, which is an inflammation of the
intestine caused by contaminated food and water.

    When asked if she ever felt discouraged or helpless
to lift the burden of poverty from the people she encountered, Conroy
said Mother Teresa taught her a valuable lesson.

“Mother Teresa taught us one, one, one,” Conroy said. “She said just
begin one at a time. Give all your love, your care, your attention, and
your compassion to that one human being in front of you.”

    Conroy said Mother Teresa reminded the group that if
she hadn’t picked up that one person, she would not have gone on to
help 42,000 others.

    After coming home from that first summer in
Calcutta, Conroy said she experienced more of a culture shock returning
to her own country than when she first arrived in India. She went on to
finish her senior year at Dartmouth and received a degree in economics,
but her experiences had changed her.

    “The only thing I can compare it to is going off to
war (and) being in the trenches,” she said. Conroy said talking about
the experience helped her process it in her own mind.

    In 1987, she spent two weeks at the Missionaries of
Charity in South Bronx, New York. Conroy made multiple trips to the
Bronx and Harlem and she recalled sitting down to tea and cookies with
Mother Teresa during some of those visits. In 1991, Conroy went back to
Calcutta.

    It was a speaking engagement at Unum that led Conroy
to write a book about that summer. She hadn’t expected anyone to show
up, but two hundred people took time out of their workday to hear her
speak. Several of them said she had to continue to tell her story.

    Conroy corresponded with Mother Teresa until her
death in 1997 and in one letter Conroy asked for her permission to
write a book. The book was published in 2003 and it became a
best-seller within weeks. In 2005, Conroy published a prayer book. For
someone who never intended to write a book, Conroy will be busy as she
has plans for three books this summer and she was recently invited to
write a book on Pope John Paul II.

    When writing the first book, Conroy said she “just
poured out (her) heart.” Writing the book helped her relive one of the
happiest experiences of her life. She said the joy she felt and
continues to feel “can only be tasted by experience.”

“Mother Teresa used to say, ‘Come and see,’” she said.

    Conroy will be at the St. Albans Episcopal Church on
Shore Road in Cape Elizabeth on May 2 for an “Evening For Compassion.”
The event starts at 7 p.m in the Bonoff Fellowship hall. Admission is
free and donations will be accepted. For more information contact the
church office at 799-4014.